Purdue hopes new videoboard will kick off Ross-Ade renovation

FORT WAYNE — A few days before formally requesting from Purdue's Board of Trustees authorization to move forward with an ambitious renovation of Ross-Ade Stadium, Mike Bobinski came here to Fort Wayne for a John Purdue Club event, to get in front of some of the very people he'll need to turn concept into reality.

Purdue is setting out to privately fund the project, for which no hard price tag has been established to this point, beyond the obvious reality that it'll be a big number.

“The message that I have been trying to deliver to folks is that organizations, entities, whatever you want to term us as, opportunities to make step-function changes in who you are and what you do don’t come around all that frequently," Bobinski said of his message to supporters. "And when they do — and it feels like it is for us right now — it’s on us to capture it and make sure that people understand that Purdue might not get another swing at something like this for god knows how long if we miss this time.

"And honestly, people have said, ‘You’re right. It feels different. We want it to be different.’ It takes investment to do that, and based on some very early conversations, it seems to resonate pretty strongly with people. It’s sort of our moment in time to make a very loud statement about who we want to be from a football perspective, understanding football touches a lot of things. Getting that right is a big deal, and one where we feel like we have an opportunity in front of us and need to make that happen.”

It's a lot, and if all goes as hoped, starting with Friday's presentation to the Trustees, the first piece will be in place in time for the 2020 season.

After the north end zone's end-to-end ribbon board is completed shortly, the south end zone will come to the forefront, as Purdue aims to replace — and markedly upgrade — its antiquated (and nearly obsolete) videoboard.

Bobinski anticipates it being a $10-million project that would not only include a significantly larger video board but a new structure to house it, causing a ripple effect throughout that end of the facility. The new structure that would be needed to house the new videoboard would move closer to the field, forcing Purdue's current patio into a different form, hopefully a "new and improved" form, Bobinski said, and potentially in conjunction with a field-level club seating component.

Purdue's intent remains to enclose the south end zone in a continuous structure, and the new videoboard would, in effect, stand as the first piece, as the remainder of the end zone project would be crafted around it. The need for a new videoboard was too acute not to address and temporary options weren't practical, Bobinski said.

Having yet to even receive university approval, formally, for the $4-million cost associated with moving ahead with designs and schematics, Bobinski spoke Tuesday in big-picture concepts as opposed to granular detail of his hopes for the new stadium.

“It’s really about increasing the number of seating options, trying to be more responsive to the ways people want to experience games these days," Bobinski said. "There’s a lot more social space. People don’t always just want to sit in a seat and look straight ahead. They want to get up and go say hello to their friends or spend time in a different setting, have better and more concessions, and more fan-friendly amenities, connectivity is a big deal … We got really strong feedback from our surveys that people want to be able to connect with other people when they’re at the game, stay tuned into what’s going on at other places.”

But, Purdue, an athletic department that has invested heavily in itself already the past few years, particularly in football, needs the funding, and so it undertakes another ambitious capital campaign, this one to be guided largely by Tim House, the new director of the John Purdue Club. He was named to the job last week after serving as interim director for several months.

“Tim’s grasp of what the opportunity is in front of us," Bobinski said, "and his ability to articulate it and connect with people in a genuine way, from what I’ve observed first-hand, and I’ve gotten a ton of feedback, unsolicited, from important folks around our program who’ve said they really enjoy working with Tim and they appreciate who he is and how passionate he is about what’s going on at Purdue. It made it a pretty easy call. It was not a hard one."

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